Jury Deliberations Begin In Jackson Family’s Wrongful Death Suit

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LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Jurors in the wrongful death lawsuit filed against AEG Live by the family of the late Michael Jackson began deliberating the case Thursday following the conclusion of closing arguments.

Closing statements ended around noon and deliberations began just before 2 p.m.

Michael Jackson’s mother, 83-year-old Katherine Jackson, sued the concert promoting giant in Sept. 2010 on behalf of herself and her son’s three children. She claims AEG negligently hired Dr. Conrad Murray to care for the singer as he prepared for his ill-fated “This Is It” comeback concert series and wants the firm to be held liable for her son’s death.

Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Jackson’s death and sentenced in November 2011 to four years in the Los Angeles County men’s jail.

AEG officials say the pop star’s death was a matter of personal, not corporate, responsibility.

Attorneys for the company, who rested their defense Sept.18, argued Jackson maintained secrecy surrounding his medical care, including the treatment Dr. Conrad Murray provided the pop star inside his bedroom when he died from an overdose of the anesthetic propofol in June 2009.

Putnam told jurors Wednesday that AEG Live would have never hired Murray if the company had known “Jackson was playing Russian Roulette in his room every night.”

“AEG Live didn’t choose him. On the contrary, they tried to talk him out of it. They told him there are great doctors in London with some of the best hospitals in the world. They told him he didn’t need to use his money to bring his doctor with him, but Mr. Jackson was undeterred,” he continued.

Putnam also told the jury that the employment contract produced by the plaintiffs, which was said to be found in Murray’s car, was never fully signed.

After a 21-week trial, lawyers for the Jackson family began their closing statements Tuesday morning.

“Even though he accomplished more than any other musician before him, he also endured more physical, mental and emotional pain than any of us could ever have imagined,” Panish said Tuesday.

The attorney then moved to the first question jurors will be asked to determine: if AEG Live hired Dr. Conrad Murray. If the jury decides that the concert promoter did not hire Murray, the deliberation will be over and the Jackson family will lose.

Panish showed the jury a clip from a British television interview with AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips in which the executive appears to answer the question.

“We just felt this is his personal doctor he wants him 24/7, and the guy’s willing to leave his practice for a large sum of money, so we hired him,” Phillips said in the video.

Panish told the jury the contract drawn up by AEG executives called for Murray to be paid for work already performed, and argued a contract can be an oral agreement and does not have to be written.

The Jackson attorney went on to focus on an email sent by AEG co-CEO Paul Gongaware that he argued shows AEG pressured Conrad Murray into making medical decisions that cost Michael Jackson his life.

“We want to remind him that it is AEG not MJ who is paying his salary. We want him to understand what is expected of him,” the email reads.

The jury was shown a portion of video deposition where Gongaware is asked about the email and says he did not recall. Panish then played a video compilation of the instances when AEG executives testified not remembering emails they sent or received.

“They wrote the email with the King of Pop, the biggest thing they had going, and they don’t remember anything,” Panish told the jury. “Because they’ve taken the ‘ABC defense': anybody but the company.”

Attorneys for the Jackson family told the jury a reasonable compensation for the loss of Michael Jackson would be $85 million for each of Jackson’s three children, and $35 million for his mother, far less than the $1 billion experts in the case had predicted based on projections of what Jackson could have earned if he lived.

The jury, which could get the case as soon as Thursday afternoon, could decide AEG is only partially responsible for the singer’s death and assign a percentage of negligence to them.